


A Yearning Grief

by Kayleegee



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayleegee/pseuds/Kayleegee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he can think of is the bottle of vodka he knows is in the bottom right drawer of the desk in Oliver’s room. He wraps his hand around the door knob and chokes back a small sob at the realization he doesn’t have to knock. Ollie’s not there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Yearning Grief

The great thing about Queen gatherings is that there is always, always, free booze. Tommy still remembers the first time Oliver figured out he could go to the bar and tell the bartender Robert wanted a scotch. The bartender hadn’t blinked and handed the 14 year old the tumbler of Macallan scotch. Oliver had triumphantly shared it with Tommy in his father’s study, both nearly choking at the taste. Robert had walked in on them, Oliver thumping his hand on Tommy’s back while Tommy hacked and coughed. Robert snatched the glass out of Tommy’s hand, and yelled at both of them before sending them back out to the party, but not before a small smirk graced Robert’s face. Tommy smiles sadly and orders a Macallan, neat, silently saluting Robert’s memory.

Tommy surveys the room, a subdued crowd of Starling City’s mighty. They all speak in hushed tones, shocked at the turn of events that have led them here. Moira moves from clustered group to clustered group, the consummate hostess. She holds her head high, an effortless confidence that has always impressed Tommy. Tommy watches as she comforts Mrs. Carmichael, a neighbor whose lake Oliver and Tommy definitely never took girls to skinny dip in at night, before discreetly leaving the room, probably to check on Thea, who had gone upstairs to lay down.

Tommy moves from the bar area but gets stopped by a sorority girl from Beta Lambda that starts talking to him like he should know her. Did he sleep with her? DId Oliver? For the life of him, Tommy can’t remember. 

“Have you seen Laurel?” the girls asks, tapping long manicured nails on her martini glass. Who the hell orders a martini at a time like this? 

Tommy shakes his head, “No, she was at the service, but I think she went home.” Tommy really doesn’t think, he knows. It took a lot of cajoling on Dinah’s part to get Laurel to go to the memorial service. Laurel had gone, though she looked like she was in a daze, like she hadn’t quite heard Tommy when he’d squeezed her hand and told her he was there for her. She’d nodded, on autopilot and let her mother lead her out of the church. They had had a similar service for Sara two days prior. 

“I feel so bad for her. Losing her sister? And her boyfriend?” A second Beta girl, a redhead Tommy is sure he hasn’t slept with pipes up. She holds a cosmopolitan, sipping distractedly at it, but it’s clear that she’s making eyes at Brent, an old fraternity brother. She’s smoothing her hair down and tugging at her dress. Tommy can’t help but be embarrassed for her. 

“I just can’t believe Ollie’s gone,” the blonde Beta girl says, “I mean, I just saw him last month at Sigma’s frat party.” She has a look of awe on her face, as though Ollie had solved world peace at that party rather than performed a keg stand that’d lasted 55 seconds. Tommy doesn’t reply because he honestly doesn’t know what to say.

These girls don’t know Oliver. They don’t know that Oliver actually preferred wine to beer and while he had enjoyed a healthy relationship with pot, he’d only done cocaine once, telling Tommy the next morning in the hotel room they’d trashed, “Never again. Really, for real, never again. Remind me how bad of an idea that was.” 

They don’t know that as much as he complained to Moira, Oliver actually didn’t mind taking Thea to school or to horseback riding lessons. Tommy was with Oliver the day Moira had called to tell him Thea had fallen off her horse and broken her arm. Oliver’s face had crumpled and he’d rushed out of Tommy’s living room. For days after Oliver was a grumpy mess, lamenting that he should have been at the lesson, that somehow watching from 100 yards away would have prevented Thea’s tumble.

These absolutely dumb girls don’t know that two days before Oliver had left for his trip with his dad he’d sat across from Tommy at a diner at two in the morning in downtown Starling City and had lent a sympathetic ear as Tommy told him about the latest chapter in the book he was writing entitled, “My Father is the Biggest Ass I Know.” They didn’t know Oliver had spent most of that afternoon shopping for his mom’s birthday, trying to find a piece of jewelry she didn’t already own. None of these people know the real Oliver and Tommy realizes he has nothing to say to any of them. 

Tommy slinks out of the reception. He takes the familiar staircase up and automatically hangs a left and finds himself one, two, three doors down on the left. All he can think of is the bottle of vodka he knows is in the bottom right drawer of the desk in Oliver’s room. He wraps his hand around the door knob and chokes back a small sob at the realization he doesn’t have to knock. Ollie’s not there.

He pushes the door open, but stops dead in his tracks. On the floor, at the foot of Ollie’s bed, is Moira. She’s kicked her shoes off and the bottle of vodka Tommy was going to plow through is sitting next to her. She has a plastic cup, possibly from Ollie’s bathroom in her hand, pressed up against her forehead. 

“Mrs. Queen...I…” Tommy doesn’t know what to say. He self consciously runs his hand through his hair, and begins to back out of the room but Moira stops him.

“Sit down, Tommy,” she says, patting a space of carpet next to her. Tommy sits down next to her and watches as she pours more vodka into the plastic cup and hands it to Tommy. He takes it gratefully. “I was checking on Thea.”

“She okay?” Tommy asks, downing the contents.

“She’s sleeping, poor thing is exhausted.” Moira takes a deep, heavy sigh. Thea isn’t the only one exhausted. 

Tommy hands her back an empty cup. “What about you?” 

“Oliver always had a way of saying exactly what I needed to hear." Moira fills the cup again but doesn’t give it back to Tommy, instead keeping it for herself. “He’d smile that beautiful...” Moira pauses, tears starting to fall again, and Tommy doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s crying as well. 

“But he would make me feel better, what ever he said,” Moira downs the vodka. “I thought, maybe, sitting in here a bit would make me feel better...but…” she trails off. 

“He loved you and Robert a lot,” Tommy tells her thickly, “He was a good son.” 

“And a wonderful brother,” Moira says to Tommy, and he knows she isn’t talking about Thea. It’s too much for Tommy, and the silent tears that have been running down his cheeks begin to be accompanied by sobs. Moira pulls Tommy close to her, and he finds his head resting on her shoulder. They stay there for a while until Tommy sees Moira abandon the plastic cup altogether and laughs at the unseemly sight of Moira Queen taking a swig of vodka straight out of the bottle. 

“How’d you know about the vodka?” Tommy asks.

Moira rolls her eyes and chuckles, “You boys were never that stealthy. There’s not much that you two got past me.” Tommy raises his eyes in disbelief, and Moira counters with, “I know for a fact there’s a stash of marijuana in the model boat on the fireplace in here.” That sends Tommy into another set of giggles, and Moira follows suit. 

Their laughing continues for a few moments before it tapers off and Tommy finds himself somberly surveying the room before turning to Moira, “What do we do now?”

Moira shakes her head, “I don’t know, Tommy, but right now, I just want to finish this bottle of vodka.” And they do.


End file.
